In the role of a sales manager, there’re many people that depend on you. Whether is your knowledge, experience or techniques, you are expected to uphold a certain level for each quality. Along those characteristics as a sales manager, your ability to coach is what help keeps your team capable. For a great sales coach, there are 3 most important qualities you need a master:
The ability to listen
The ability to keep from interfering
The ability to build positive relationships with your sales rep
Tip #1: Master your listening skills
Allowing your reps to talk and while listening carefully to what they have to say is an essential skill for sales managers. It is important to for your reps to freely express themselves on the issues or situations they are experiencing. Not does it helps you identify a solution for them quicker, it helps build trust with your reps.
As a Sales manager, you should ask open-ended questions when you are helping them come up with a solution. These questions should help your sale reps identify their own solution rather than providing them with the answer. As they find their own solutions, they will be able to tackle much more difficult tasks in the future.
Tip #2: They will learn with their own experiences - Stop Interfering
One of your ability as a coach is to sometimes do nothing. As a sales coach, you want them to achieve independence. It is difficult to not interfere when one of your rep is struggling, but their lessons learned from their own attempts and failures will stick them much more.
Through you training sessions, guiding your reps to see why things weren’t according to plan with their prospects is an important task. They will learn much faster through their own experiences.
Of course, the mistakes that you let them stumble on should be minor. The objective is to help you reps see what went wrong by themselves.
Build a positive relationship through trust
Coaching your sales representatives becomes much easier and productive when they trust you. Reps that feel confident that they can freely express themselves and know their sales manager have their back will listen and learn much quicker.
Sales reps that don’t trust their sales managers will be dishonest to avoid consequences. They will tell you what you want to hear, and not what they plan to do. You do not want them to hide their bad behaviours out of fear you will judge them.
If they can’t express themselves freely, then you can’t help to address their problems. As a sales manager, your main goal is to help improve your reps help and building a strong positive relationship with them is the fastest route.
Final Thought
The best way to coach your reps is to help them develop their own solutions. Ask open-ended questions to guide them and to give them the opportunity to learn their own lessons.
Your sales representatives improve much quicker when they know you are there to support what they do.
